Why to Take Imperfect Action

You’ve probably heard about how you should be taking ‘imperfect action,’ but you’re a perfectionist, and you just can’t do that. You take pride in your work, your name is on the door, and you want things to be perfect for your clients. Imperfect doesn’t sound good to you.

But can you afford to spend the time on everything until it is perfect? Making things perfect is expensive, and the costs are likely more than your clients want to pay.

This is a big problem with trying to be perfect. It paralyzes us and keeps us from moving forward in our businesses.

Get your plane in the air. You can’t get from New York to San Diego if you’re still sitting on the runway.

You have to get some momentum going, especially in today’s world. I like the analogy of getting a plane off the ground. When flying from New York to San Diego, the pilots adjust their controls constantly throughout the trip. Many factors affect the plane’s path that can’t be known until the actual flight—the weather, turbulence, birds, other planes—and it’s not possible to have a ‘perfect’ flight where every detail is known ahead of time. The pilots simply have to go with the flow and make course corrections along the way.

It’s the same with business today.

The nature of business is to make a profit

If you are not doing what you’re doing to make a profit, you may as well just have a hobby, or do volunteer work—right? In fact, I recommend that you DO have a hobby or volunteer work where you can satisfy your desire for perfection so you don’t have to expect it from your business.

The truth is, you’re going to evolve naturally as you go along and as your business matures. And you aren’t going to be able to predict everything that happens in your business from the get go—it’s very seldom a straight path. So it’s very important to just get started on that thing you want to do, to not wait until everything is perfect to get it out there and offer it to your clients. Just get close and put the website up anyway. Don’t worry that your sales copy is perfectly on the mark—it’s probably good and close enough. You can always adjust the website after it’s up—you’ll be updating your website anyway—and tweak the copy in the second version. Now, I never thought I’d be saying these things, because I used to be one of those people who wouldn’t let anything go out until it was absolutely perfect—and I let a lot of opportunities pass me by that way, too.

Taking action improves focus

In order to keep focus in your business, you need to take action and not worry that it’s the absolute perfect action. Stopping to try to be perfect leads to second-guessing and indecision, which all ruin focus, and breed doubt and inactivity. Don’t get caught here! You can adjust as you go—but you can’t correct your course until you’re under way.

It’s expected that you’ll fly off course a bit because of the turbulence you’ll encounter. But it’s not a problem! Why? Because you can correct your course.

Things change so quickly in business today, much more quickly than ever before, that you really can’t afford to not keep moving. Your business is always changing, too, and the way you’re doing business is changing. So if you’re waiting for something to be perfect, your own business is not going to be the same in six months when you’ve got whatever you’re perfecting perfect—and you’ll have to start again!

So get moving. Instead of focusing on making things perfect for your clients, focus on making things happen for your clients, on getting results for your clients.

Take imperfect action. Get your plane in the air. And if you run into turbulence, adjust your course.

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